Trump orders Pentagon to cut US troops in S. Korea: NYT

washington — President Donald Trump has ordered the Pentagon to prepare options for reducing the number of US troops in South Korea, the New York Times reported on Thursday, citing several people briefed on the deliberations.

Reduced US troop levels are not intended to be a bargaining chip in Trump’s planned summit in late May or early June with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un about Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme, the Times said.

The officials said, however, that a peace treaty between the two Koreas could diminish the need for the 23,500 US soldiers currently stationed on the peninsula, the newspaper said. A full withdrawal of US troops was unlikely, the officials said, according to the paper.

But a US National Security Council official told a visiting South Korean official in Washington via telephone the report was false, the South Korean presidential office said in a statement.

Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Logan, a Pentagon spokesman, said its posture has not changed.

Trump said that the US should consider reducing the number of troops in South Korea unless South Korea shoulders more of the cost.

Meanwhile, the White House said it would welcome the release of three Americans imprisoned in North Korea as a goodwill gesture before a planned summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, but that it could not confirm reports that they are about to be freed.

Expectations have grown that North Korea would soon release the three ahead of the unprecedented summit in the coming weeks.

Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s new main lawyer, told Fox News Channel that Pyongyang would release them as early as Thursday. It was not immediately clear whether Giuliani had direct knowledge of negotiations around the issue.

CNN said on Thursday the prisoners’ release was imminent, adding the groundwork for the move was laid two months ago when North Korea’s foreign minister traveled to Sweden and proposed the idea. —

US soldiers currently stationed on the Korean peninsula